Little Winter Elegies
Dear poets: After you have died, where is the winter field? There is no more sorrow here. Like a wild garden it unwinds under my gravestone feet while we wait for the ground to melt. Tell me the way? O chanting, is there a path: a fire in the snow warms us, over its black and charred circle; a gentle persuasion redeems us as we hold steaming mugs of apple cider . . . What is my consolation in a winter field, where each snowflake is a brush with time? An intricate melding with eternity: the sparkle of crystal and aspen-white flowers deeper than the trunks ordering space, meticulous as it is disordered. The future marching on note by note to the thunder of white horses, their hoofs graft the wild garden of a field on a solstice noon. Dear poets: singing on where I have seen the frost harden; what I have seen your hands collect, winter brush for a fire, winter flowers, dried solace, a foundation of ancient mahogany in s...